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Bringing you KERA Magazine's popular "Street Snap" corner, with snapshots of fashion from the streets of Harajuku.
Miho Goto (From Tokyo), 20, Staff at too much
Shoes: At 109
What I associate with summer: Watermelons
"I’m always at the too much store. Come and visit me!"
Ok. The news is out. Publisher's Weekly just announced that Last Gasp has licensed Junko Mizuno's manga Fancy Gigolo Pelu. My company jaPRESS will be handling the production (like we did for Junko's Pure Trance and Town of Evening Calm) and I'll be co-editing the book along with Last Gasp's Colin Turner and Junko herself, who is closely supervising the English script. The truth is, we're busy working on it already! Look for the finished product in all the usual places come Spring 2009!
Episode #27
The mad, mad quest for the mythical super galaxy known as Virgin Space continues as Otackers Pat and Matt storm the Tokyo Trader Vic’s in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the South Pacific with no money whatsoever. On the authentic Polynesian menu: Crab Rangoon, Kazuo Umezu, the Perfect Burger, porn shop bingo with Denki Watanabe, “Love Letter From Hell” by Hayami Jun, stamina drinks, Pineapple Fried Rice, lousy coffee, mystery guests, and (*spoilers*) big fruity cocktails with little paper umbrellas in them!
* No jeans, T-shirts or sneakers
PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SMOKING CIGARS AND PIPES IN DINING ROOM.
Click here to download
© Hot Tears of Shame Production Committee/jaPRESS
Update: We're still inside trying to figure out how we are ever going to get out of this one alive.
Found today at Cherry Blossom Eiga. Has anyone out there ever actually played the Hiroki Matsukata fishing game for the Super Famicom before? It must be amazing and involve big bottles of sake and chain smoking somehow.
FEEL FREE!
REALIZE WHAT WE SHOULD DO.
IF WE WERE
EPOCH MAKER,
NO ONE COULD DISTURB
DRAMATIC
SUMMER MEMORIES.
JUST GO OUT WITH...
Excerpt from interview with Shoko Nakagawa, conducted by Patrick Macias July 4, 2008 at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. This is about 1/3rd of the entire interview and the full thing will run in issue 8 of OTAKU USA magazine on sale in late August / early September.
How do you personally define the word “otaku”?
The word otaku can cover so much territory. It’s so wide…Even though I can call myself an otaku, some people might say “no, you are not otaku enough.” Sometimes I wonder what divides the line between otaku and not-otaku. For people who don’t know anything about anime, I am an otaku. But even among otaku there are many different types of otaku, like people who like anime, manga, trains, or idols. It’s hard to reduce it all to just one word. The only thing I can say about otaku for sure is that they are the people who live greedily with passion for something.
What about the word “fan” and “maniac.” You hear these words a lot in place of the word “otaku” in Japan.
“Fan” is a little lighter than “otaku”. But “maniac” seems even more hardcore than “otaku”.
Is it fair to say that your own otaku taste leans towards the retro?
Yeah, exactly. I don’t sleep at all. When I come home – which is late already – my own otaku time begins. I hold my cat, I draw manga, do cosplay, play games, watch anime, and do something on my computer all at the same time. Around dawn, I start thinking about natsukashii (nostalgic) stuff and I feel happy. I don’t really know why, but yeah, a lot of the stuff I like is from the ‘80s to the mid-‘90s or older.
Do you think it’s just nostalgia on your part, or do you think there really was something special about that era of anime?
That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I wonder why I think that older otaku stuff is better than current stuff…Maybe I just got older, or maybe those works like Dragon Ball and Slayers really were better. I could probably talk about this for five hours more with you…
Many American otaku tend to be only interested in the new stuff...
I agree with you. It is the same in Japan. Otaku teenagers don’t know anything about old anime so I feel like I have to passionately inform them about the previous generation of anime and manga. But today, there’s a lot of homage to older anime in shows like Gurren Lagaan and Macross Frontier, so maybe if you start there, it’s easier for new fans to enjoy retro stuff. And when you find out about the roots of something you like, you get a certain satisfaction. So it’s another way to enjoy anime.
Another thing about your taste is that you seem to like really macho stuff…
Yeah, basically, I like macho stories about guys who injured and have to fight. My hero is Vegeta from Dragon Ball or Trunks, so that’s my favorite style. I get really excited to see any character like Trunks who has silver hair. My fantasy is to tease them and annoy them until they go crazy.
How about more typically shojo stuff?
I like the kinds of stories where a girl goes to a mysterious new world where there are lots of guys and she is the only girl, just like Fushigi Yugi. I usually fantasize that I’m really popular with them and everyone asks me out. The current example would be Ouran High School Host Club. Ouran is great because you can fantasize about many different guys about you.
It seems like the number of female otaku have really increased over the last few years both in Japan and in the US.
I feel like the Internet has something to do with that. Just speaking from my own experience, before I even acknowledged myself as an otaku, I didn’t have any female friends I could share my interests with. But eventually, using the PC, I was able to find other girls who had the same interests as me. Maybe there were always female otaku, but they only began to become visible on the Internet. Some members of my fan club are coming to my concert tomorrow, and about half of them are doing cosplay. I’m really happy to have female fans.
Don’t you think that you might have had some sort of impact on the number of female otaku?
No, I’m just one of them, but to be honest, I do get many letters that begin “because of you…” and I feel really happy to hear that. After I came out and said that I was an otaku, my life became more enjoyable. I can’t live without my hobby; it’s the source of my energy. So I feel like we are living in a time where girls can be proud to be otaku.
Do you think that recent events in Akihabara will have any significant impact on otaku culture? (On June 8, 2008, seven people died and 10 others were injured after a man hit pedestrians with a truck and then stabbed people in Akihabara)
What happened in Akiba was a very sad incident. If a criminal is found to be a fan of a particular anime, then people will bash that anime. But the crime is the person’s responsibility, not the anime. Anime is not evil. The person’s behavior was evil. One interesting phenomenon is that anime theme songs are getting higher and higher rankings on the J-pop charts, sometimes reaching the number 1 or 2 spot. So I feel like anime is very strong and powerful right now. At this current moment, Akihabara may be a place where people are scared to go, but the anime industry is still strong and people’s feeling for anime hasn’t changed. So maybe that event will not have much influence on otaku culture.
BOA was a funky old coffee shop near Kichijoji station that had probably peaked around 1973, yet still clung onto the ghost of the Showa era past for all it was worth. It looked just like that idealized record cover there except that the husband and wife team that owned the place were ancient and ornery, the seats had seen better days decades ago, and the plastic dessert display outside was caked in dustballs. The sole concession to the world outside was the thin and tinny sound of modern J-pop radio that came out of a once state-of-the art speaker hidden away behind a metal grill on the wall. I was sad - but not surprised - when the place closed down earlier this year. If only they’d splurged for a CD player and slapped on KISSA ROCK – ADAM to EVE mo, then the march of time might have utterly stopped once and for all.
Like others in the series, this volume of KISSA ROCK features extremely sensitive and caring Japanese vocal acts from the bygone days of yesteryear pulling out every mellow musical trick in the book to help even the most wound-up person in Tokyo to JUST FUCKING RELAX ALREADY, OK? As a genre, “Coffee shop rock” could actually be softer than soft rock, even several notches dimmer than lite rock, but songs like "Umareta toki wa" still must have been a wall-shaking experience (in a nice way) when served inside a proper cathedral of coffee and cake.
Let's Ondo Again - Niagara Fallin' Stars
* LP: LX-7054 (COLUMBIA) Nov. 1978
* PRODUCER: EIICHI OHTAKI
A “super session” LP in which traditional Japanese instruments and arrangements - in addition to about a million other things - go through the mixer via producer Ohtaki Eiichi’s encyclopedic knowledge of pop music past. “Around the World in 377 Seconds” aims to do just that with quotes from Satisfaction and Purple Haze married to shakuhachi flutes and zonked out sitars, while the centerpiece is a one-two tribute to Pink Lady that crib bits from the then-massive duo’s best songs, adding lyrics about legendary thief Goemon Ishikawa for period authenticity. The finale sees Ohtaki channeling Chubby Checker in a matsuri mood as he urges us to “ondo again” like we did last summer, presumably. Shouldn't work, of course, but like one of those "Weird Al" polka medlies or a Carl Stalling cartoon soundtrack, the pieces all fit together somehow. The magic's in the music, etc al.
Around the World in 337 Seconds
Pink Lady
Kawahara's Goemon Ishikawa
Let's Ondo Again!
Ok. Here’s the new issue of OTAKU USA magazine (Intimate confession time: I’m the editor in chief, is that a conflict of interest?). You know the rules: it should be on sale in an actual store where you actually buy magazines starting now, with the US post office doing their part by delivering them to subscribers as well. Some of you may even have seen this issue being waved around at Anime Expo! I know we’ll take our cracks for supposed "otaku sell out" use of Full Metal Alchemist on the cover, but we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank so we can’t actually hear you. Kidding on both counts, of course, and now it’s time to talk turkey.
What’s Inside: Pictures and writing about anime, manga, and Japanese pop culture in general by the likes of Matt Alt, Yunmao Ayakawa, Emily Balistrieri, Zac Bentz, Casey Brienza, Austell Callwood, J.L. Carrozza, Paul Thomas Chapman, Ed Chavez, Mike Dent, Caleb Dunaway, Tim Eldred, Erin Finnegan, Shaenon Garrity, Clarissa Graffeo, Heidi Kemps. Gilles Poitras, August Ragone, Dave Riley, Daryl Surat, and Darius Washington!
Things that I like about this issue:
Sidebar on the history of Japanese superheroes in America. The Stan Lee interview. The Koichi Ohata interview. Daryl Surat delivering the definitive FMA article of our times. Manga excerpts of both Black Jack and Black Lagoon. Bandai’s Soul of Chogokin super robot toys. Nihon Maid Association seminars. The fact that it marks our first year of publishing. The subhead: “TV game brawling at the mouth of madness”.
Now to make you another issue!
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